Thursday, December 28, 2006

Now if you shoot my dog, I'ma kill yo' cat

What interests me is that Islamic law codes, when they arose, were really a response to the extremism of tribal law codes (with their sanctions of massive retaliation for insults). Indeed, the sharia law code was significantly saner, in many ways, than codes used by tribes similar to the Pushtuns.

Now, of course, the Pushtuns are seen as possible allies for their resistance to the Taliban in Afghanistan - but this is overly simplistic:

But once the Taliban restored order to most of Afghanistan, Pushtuns began recoiling against their rulings. Their public executions and other outrages to public decency were anathema to them. So too when the Taliban—despite their celebrated chauvinism—outlawed wich pur and advocated female inheritance. No wonder if the lives of the vast majority of Afghan women have not eased since the Taliban were bombed from power.

I'm reading George F Kennan's memoirs right now, and although he's a Soviet expert, he had some interesting things to say while on a stopover in Egypt. He saw that the Mid-East would appeal to Americans in the same way the American frontier did - and that we'd be tempted to make grand political experiments there in the same way we did in the west, and this worried him immensely.

Much as I support America's democratic intentions in the Middle East, the Pushtuns are but one reason that America could do with a touch more humility in the region.

Monday, December 18, 2006

A guy I can respect the hell out of

He doesn't offer any opinions on anything he hasn't personally experienced. He wears a Harley-Davidson T-shirt because he rides a Harley-Davidson. He didn't use the word "adventure" once during an hour-long interview about his under-the-radar trips to Vietnam and Iraq....The way he explained his methods upon returning: "I try not to take political sides, but I will tell anyone interested what I saw and let them make their own conclusions. . . . I try to provide context.

"I was in the military when Vietnam collapsed. It was painful for me and the soldiers of that era.

"I have never been satisfied with someone else telling me how I should feel, and that's what I was getting about Iraq. Tie in the fact that this is what I heard during the Vietnam years, only this time around it was not good enough. I wanted to find out for myself," he said.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Notes from a scene part II: There's no line for the Joanna Newsom show

Now that Joe and I are in different cities, our get-togethers tend to revolve around music. Yesterday, it was the much-anticipated Joanna Newsom show, with a stop at the Madison Pop Fest first.

We got to the Rathskellar around 6.30, in time to see The Bracelets go on. We'd seen them a year ago at the Orpheum Stage Door, and been quite impressed with their sparser-than-Godspeed You! Black Emperor ambient sound. The atmosphere of the Stage Door, combined with the slide show the band was running behind them, had also worked well in their favor.

Today's show was... different. The brightly-lit Rat didn't play to the band's atmospherics (although when the lights were turned down partway through the show, the band got appreciably better). Also, the band has apparently decided that they need to sing - an unfortunate decision, given the guitarist's general inability to sing, or really sound good at all with sound coming out of his mouth. If they don't go back to the lyric-less format, which isn't something necessarily dictated by their sound, they really need to go toward the laptop-tronica sampling format, and start working in samples of other people's voices. There is some real potential there, but the lead's voice is not the right path.

Ambulette also played, and did a fantastic job - as the reviews had promised. Lead Maura Davis's vocals are really amazing, and the general sound worked very well around that. I saw comparisons to the Cardigans, while Joe saw Pretenders influences.

We didn't stick around for the other bands, deciding that we'd get in line for Joanna Newsom early (around 8.15 for the 9.30 doors). However, an unfortunately awkward gent (whom we'd later dub "clueless George," for reasons that will become apparent) was turning everyone away - "We're not letting anyone form a line - Joanna wants a closed sound-check." So, okay, we wandered away, roaming the back halls of the Union, seeing clustered knots of bored-looking indie kids all over the place.

It was rapidly becoming apparent that this was going to be a huge event. I didn't realize a the time that Pitchfork had marked this show on its front page, nor that All Music Considered had just added Newsom, but I did know that the Isthmus had profiled Joanna on the cover of its last issue. More ominously, I overheard one hipster mentioning to another that "yeah, my friend said that even if you've never heard of Joanna, or you hate her, if you're at all cool, you'll show up." Clearly, a Big Thing was brewing.

A knot of people (not a line, remember - that was verboten - even though it was really to straight to be a proper knot) was forming around the main staircase on the 3rd floor - just under the Great Hall - and by 9 the area was getting pretty crowded. Clueless George came down every so often to remind us that they weren't permitting a line to form (maybe he was adapting to the situation on the ground?), and that we should all just go away until 9.30. This obviously wasn't happening, but there clearly was no backup plan. The indie mob began to get restless, slowly creeping up the stairs, only to be chastized and chased back down by George. Around 9.25, the now mob (remember: not a line!) of people decided to go up the stairs - there were far more indie kids that Union staff of any kind, and Clueless George really seemed to be the only Union rep. there at all. Finally the doors opened at 9.30 - at which time a very large mob of indie kids (horror of horrors!) began to make its last push into the Great Hall. At this point, we realized that there were actually two lines - one had also formed in the upstairs hallway, marking the true limit of George's power.

The mob-in to the Great Hall actually went off well, with no fatalities except for the one emo kid who "accidentally" cut himself on a very sharp hand railing, apparently. Anyway, no one was stomped on, and Joe and I formed a coat pile with some other indie kids who proceeded to get a slow clap started. That failed to produce any results other than a vague look of confusion on George's face. (Other kids tried to get a slow clap going later. Their work was totally derivative, and they are n00bs.) Anyhow, it slowly became apparent that Nothing Was Happening, and the indie kids again grew restless. This in itself should have worried George, because usually indie kids are just lethargic, but he was on his cell phone, and apparently didn't notice.

That was about the point that it was announced that Joanna and Bill Callahan were still eating dinner (hopefully in a wimsical, interestingly offbeat fashion), and would be late. It was at this point that I was really glad this wasn't a metal show. I'm generally thankful for that, as I'm averse to mullets, worn ironically or not, but in this case, there most certainly would have been large, uncoordinated violence (which is to say, we had a chance to make up for the lack of rioting on Halloween; yes, the Joanna Newsom show came closer to producing a riot than Halloween - isn't that sad).

To summarize a lot of standing around boredly, we stood around boredly until about 10.40, when Smog finally took the stage. I think I'd heard one of his songs before, but I was unprepared for his voice, which was quite fantastic. Unfortunately, his song writing and guitar work really didn't live up to the quality of his voice, and everyone really just wanted him to get off the stage and get on with the Joanna Newsom show (for which there had never been a line). Which he finally did.

At about midnight, Joanna finally took the stage. She opened with Bridges and Balloons, which I'd only ever heard covered by The Decemberists. It was, of course, wonderful - she played unaccompanied. After playing through two other songs, one of which was an old Scottish song, she brought on a band and played through Ys. It was truly astounding. The very sparse arrangements made for a somehow deeper sound than on the album - using accordion, drum (one big bass drum and cymbals, nothing else), guitar, an odd Ukrainian balalaika-type stringed isntrument, banjo, jaw harp, and, at the end, a singing saw, the depth and quality of sound was indescribable. It was truly an other-worldly experience, with Joanna's voice always standing out, even when harmonizing with two backup singers. Also, the band she was playing with were all fantastically professional (unlike Regina Spektor's studio-session goons).

So all in all, it was 100% worth every hassle we dealt with. Standing for 5 hours, being packed like sardines, first on the stairs and then in the Great Hall, the heat - all worth it. A truly incredible experience.

Friday, December 01, 2006

Let it snow...

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Does this mean they don't support the troops?

Now back in power, the Democrats have grand objectives - certainly going far beyond the rallying cries of Iraq and socialized health care:

Sen. Tim Johnson said in an interview that a top priority is the military lending measure, which caps at 36% the annual percentage rate, including fees, that can be charged to service members and their dependents. The South Dakota Democrat warned that the provision - intended to curb payday lending - may interfere with the credit system.

The measure "may have a lot of unintended consequences that will go far beyond just the payday industry," he said. "We are going to have to revisit that issue and make sure that the end result of this legislation isn't to deny military members and their families access to banking services that they've always assumed would be there."

The measure, written by Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo., who narrowly lost his reelection bid last week, "flew through here awful quickly in a very political environment," Sen. Johnson said.

Though he said he was sympathetic to the problem, noting that one of his sons was an Army veteran, he warned that carve-outs for specific types of people could set a dangerous precedent.

"This time it's military. Who's to say it isn't going to be widows and orphans or other sympathetic groups in the future?" he asked. "We need to address the needs of people who have short-term, low-denominational credit needs, but I fear that the legislation we passed is going to have unintended consequences that were not fully thought through."

Wait, wait, wait - since when are the Democrats concerned about giving out special benefits to minority groups?

Realism from deep space

I'm a great fan of Soviet propaganda posters (see this great collection for starters) - I find them beautiful in a very strange and expressive way, and much as I deplore what they stand for, the ability of the USSR and other Communist regimes to glorify, say, farmers or refrigerator makers is really amazing.

So naturally, my curiosity was piqued when I came across this collection of political billboards from Cuba (via Metafilter).

Bipartisanship?

The approach may be the first indication of how the Democrats plan to use their ability to control the House agenda as the majority power, setting the terms of debate while lifting the strict rules that Republicans used to curtail dissent. […]

Because House rules changes are, by tradition, party-line votes, breaking the package into its components would also allow Republicans to support individual amendments, even though they probably would vote against the package in the end.

The unorthodox approach, more reminiscent of the drawn-out legislating done in the Senate than the slam-dunks of the House, would also give Democratic leaders a chance to show that they plan to change the way the House does business, Democrats said.

Friday, November 24, 2006

Fast-track to problems?

It seems very likely that the new Democratic Congress will be one that kills free trade. The signs were already on the wall with the debate over CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement) and Singapore Free Trade Acts, and those agreements passed on the skin of it’s teeth. With Majorities now in their favor, any free trade agreement in the next two years is clearly dead on arrival.

Returning to something a bit old

I promised a little while back to give a quick digression on the differences I see between the right and left sides of the blogosphere, so since I'm posting anyway, let's do that.

I certainly continue to believe that the Lieberman victory was at the same time a major loss for the Kosack left - known primarily for its vitriol. This is in stark contrast to the major "conservative" (or more precisely, center-right libertarian and independent) bloggers - especially central figures like Glenn Reynolds, Ann Althouse, and Dean Esmay. During the 2004 campaign, I saw their impact - in a race in which Rove quite pointedly ignored the center-right libertarian and independent vote, these major "right-wing" pundits were able to speak the language of the center to bring in voters.

I sense that as the Republican party continues to move away from the center, focusing increasingly on the perceived base of the hard religious right, even the relative centrism of these bloggers will be to increasingly little avail. But for a time, it worked well, and could again if the Republican party as a whole makes a move back toward the center.

Problems in Chi-com land

Foreign banks threaten to roil China's savings pool. They're scheduled to take deposits from the beginning of next year as a condition of China's accession to the WTO. That's bad news for the Chinese government, which needs the savings pool to fund the bad loans in the domestic banking system. That may explain why the State Council has issued regulations further delaying the date when foreign banks can take retail deposits.

The Chinese economy has a problem; the huge amount of bad loans - probably as much as $1 trillion, equivalent to more than 40% of GDP - that Chinese state banks have made to loss-making state-owned companies with political connections. So far, everything's been fine. Foreign investors have snapped up minority stakes in Chinese banks in IPOs this year, the most recent a record-breaking $21.6 billion operation for Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

Incidentally, look for lots of banking-related posts in the near future from me - not because I'm particularly interested in the subject, but because American Banker is the only thing I can really read to slack off on the job.